London planetree: Brooklyn's most common street tree

Planetrees (Manhattan)

The London planetree was not only the most common street tree in New York City (five boroughs) in 2005, it was the most common street tree in Brooklyn, at 24% of the population. The next four most common street trees in Brooklyn were Norway maple (11%), honeylocust (9%), pin oak (7%), and Callery pear (7%).

 
Bud opening -- Callery pear

New York City's 2005 street tree inventory organized by the Department of Parks & Recreation revealed the five most common street trees in New York City's five boroughs. In the Bronx, the top five were honeylocust (13%), Norway maple (12%), London planetree (11%), pin oak (9%), and Callery pear (8%); in Manhattan, honeylocust (23%), Callery pear (16%), Ginkgo (10%), London planetree (8%), and littleleaf linden (6%) were the most common species; in Queens, the top five were Norway maple (18%), London planetree (14%), pin oak (8%), Callery pear (7%), and honeylocust (7%); and on Staten Island, the most common street trees were Callery pear (25%), London planetree (10%), red maple (9%), Norway maple (8%), and pin oak (7%).

 
Bud opening -- Norway maple

Want to know more? Read our post about the 10 Most Common Street Trees in New York City. How do street tree populations vary by neighborhood in your city?

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What are the 10 most common street trees in New York City?

In 2005, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation organized a street tree inventory. Surveyors counted 592,130 trees which represents a "19% increase" in the population over the 1995-1996 population count of 499,130 trees. The 10 most common street trees in New York City in 2005 are listed below and annotated with quotes from Arthur Plotnik's The Urban Tree Book (2000).

Allee of planetrees

1. London planetree 15.3%
"The London planetree is widely considered to be the world's most reliable city tree."  We wrote about the planetree for our Tree Walk: London planetrees of Washington Square Village.

Linden flowers

2. Littleleaf linden 4.7
"...the beauty of the plant, its perfume, its pugnacity, have made it a city choice for generations--long enough to become an urban fixture throughout much of the United States and Europe." An allee of littleleaf lindens or Unter den Linden is famous in Berlin.

3. Norway maple 14.1
"The very shade that endears the tree to some planters is bad news to others....The resulting shade can seem as refreshing as a forest glen or as somber as a Norwegian winter--even menacing, depending on temperament or the neighborhood situation."

4. Green ash 3.5
"...even these most common street ashes have their charms. The leaves grown fern-like, almost feathery, allowing dappled sunlight to reach the grass or espresso drinkers below."

5. Callery pear 10.9
"A charming, widely used, and controversial street tree, cultivated from a hardy Asian species and embraced by urban landscapes for the last half of the twentieth century."

6. Red maple 3.5
"Come spring, small, mostly red flower clusters emerge. The infant leaves that follow tend to be red. The paired seed wings (samaras) come out early, generally red-tinted. Through summer, the slender leafstalks glow a rhubarb red, though the leaf itself is medium green on top and whitish green below."

7. Honeylocust 8.9
"The tree made it in New York, Chicago, and scores of other tough towns only when it lost its lethal thorns....But the hybrid kept the traits that equip a tree for urban life: It shakes off heat, drought, air pollution, salt spray, and root drenching."

8. Silver maple 3.2
"A venerable big tree on American streets, Widely planted by earlier generations for its quick growth, shady spread, handsome two-toned foliage, and shaggy bark. Controversial for its tendency to break under stress."

Pin oak

9. Pin oak 7.5
"A native of wet places (palustris is Latin for "of marshes"), the pin oak does fine in Cementland if it gets sun and acidic soil."

Ginkgo fruit (female plant)

10. Ginkgo 2.8
"One of Earth's oldest plant species, it spanned the temperate forests more than 200 million years ago.  And judging by fossil remains, it has not changed its essential character for perhaps 150 million years."  Would you like to know more about the ginkgo?  Read our post About the Ginkgo biloba.

Stay tuned for more about New York City's street trees. Next time: most common trees by borough. In the meantime, what are the most common street trees in your city?

Manhattan's parks as green infrastructure

We really like attending conferences; we always learn so much. For example, at the recent MillionTreesNYC symposium we learned about the city's Green Infrastructure and Urban Ecology "Sites of Interest" such as Washington Square (#3), Union Square (#5), High Line (#6) parks. These are three of 12 sites in Manhattan. No sites were identified in the other four boroughs.



How does the High Line provide green infrastructure and urban ecology? "The High Line is an excellent example of multi-partner collaboration for sustainability and innovate [sic] ecological design....a model for revitalization of existing infrastructure." Another way in which the park is a model of urban ecology - its mostly native species planting palette designed by Piet Oudolf.



Union Square hosts "New York City's first, largest and most famous Greenmarket" whose vendors provide local fruits, vegetables, etc. Also, the trees on 17th Street and Union Square West (photograph) have been planted in structural soil to provide more "useable soil volume for root growth."


The restoration of Washington Square Park continues with the eastern section of the park/ second phase (above). This phase features "restored landscaping, plantings, and flower beds replacing excess asphalt" which will reduce the local urban heat island.


One thing of note: the trees have been surrounded by tree protection zones but the protection zones seem inadequate. The "critical root zone" is typically calculated as 1' of root zone for every 1" of diameter at breast height. The protection zones in Washington Square Park do not adhere to this ratio.

Where's the green infrastructure in your city?

Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

Our life, of late, has been filled with "bicycle legs." The almost daily activity inspired this post. The "dog" bicycle rack, above, located in front of the AIANY gallery was designed by David Byrne and was entered in the 2008 CityRacks Design Competition.



Last summer, I spent some time with Bike Arc designer Joseph Bellomo at his Palo Alto office. (The arc's co-designer is Jeff Selzer.) The Bike Arc is "a modular bike parking system." The arc located outside Bellomo's office, shown above, is the Bus Arc which meshes bike parking and a bus shelter. The product is popular on the SF Peninsula.



Another multi-purpose bicycle parking system was spotted on Fourth Street in Berkeley, California. This one doubles as a tree guard.



Also from our archives, the BikeLid:

What's looks like a boa constrictor that has swallowed an animal and protects and secures bicycles? A BikeLid bicycle parking system! Several weeks ago {August 2009} I spied four in a Chelsea courtyard. The uncovered bikes seem exposed and vulnerable. Each BikeLid can store two bicycles. How does the BikeLid work? Here are the instructions.

Bird Watch: Papendick's outdoor sculptures for birds

Thanks to Lisa Boone at L.A. at Home for allowing us to re-post her essay about backyard bird feeders.

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Joe Papendick via L.A. at Home

As the leaves have begun to return to the limbs of my ash tree, so have the birds. The chirping has become so enticing lately, in fact, that I have become something of a backyard birder (otherwise known as "a yard work procrastinator").

So in an effort to put off weeding ... I mean, to attract more birds, I have been searching for an appropriate bird feeder. While there are certainly a lot of great-looking modern bird feeders available, I felt those might seem to be slumming it in my neglected, toy-strewn back 40. Yet the ones I found at my neighborhood hardware store seemed too corny.

Enter St. Louis artist Joe Papendick, whose sculpted steel bird feeders, shown above, feel just right. They are a little rough, just like my yard, and yet visually striking and colorful enough to be appreciated from a far kitchen window.

His new “Home” series, (in cinnamon, on the right) measures 6 inches square and 18 inches tall and is inspired by the shape of old wooden birdhouses (presumably the ones I didn't like). The Sunscreen Sunflower feeder (in yellow, at left) is designed specifically to hold Black Oil Sunflower Seeds. It also appears to be squirrel-resistant. The pieces hang from a 20-inch galvanized steel wire, all the better to keep squirrels and other rodents at bay.

The feeders range from $65 to $85 and are available on Papendick's Etsy page and 1000 Markets. For more information and custom orders, click here.

Text credit: Lisa Boone at L.A. at Home, photo credit: Joe Papendick.

Tree stewardship signs matter

A survey of survival rates of young street trees in New York City revealed that trees associated with at least one stewardship sign had a 90% survival rate compared to a 70% survival rates for trees with no stewardship signs. I attended the MillionTreesNYC Symposium last weekend and heard, among other presentations, the "Survival Rates of Young Street Trees in New York City" by Jacqueline Lu of the NYC Parks and Recreation Department.

Quarantines, or "a brief global history of public-health confinements"

National Geographic, December 2009

Quarantines are the subject of an upcoming exhibit at Storefront for Architecture. The "Landscapes of Quarantine" exhibit, co-curated by Nicola Twilley of Edible Geography (and of The Foodprint Project) and Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG, opens on Tuesday, March 9 at 7 p.m. and closes on April 17.

Gaslight Mystery "Murder on Washington Square"

Brick houses on Washington Square North

For Valentine's Day, I received Victoria Thompson's first two Gaslight Mysteries - Murder on Astor Place (1999) and Murder on St. Mark's Place (2002) - and I am hooked. Recently I bought numbers three and four in the series: Murder on Gramercy Park (2001) and Murder on Washington Square (2002). As you might have guessed from the series and book titles, the mysteries are set in early twentieth century New York City neighborhoods.

In Murder on Washington Square, the woman protagonist, Sarah Brandt (Mrs. Brandt), meets a friend in Washington Square. She narrates the landscape as follows:

As always when she was here, Sarah's gaze instinctively found the house where she had been raised. It sat on the east side of the Square, perched like a middle-aged woman who still bore signs of her previous beauty but who was beginning to show the inevitable effects of age. Sarah knew the place had become a boardinghouse after her parents sold it. The Deckers had moved uptown to escape the rising tide of immigrants whose lodgings were encroaching the Square on the south side. But it would always be her home....across the expanse of green grass, the large fountain sparkled in the fading sunlight. Put there to provide water for thirsty horses, it also provided an oasis of beauty amid the harsh brick and mortar of the city. Sarah's bedroom window had looked out on the fountain, and she'd spent many hours as a young girl watching it.

Fountain and Arch, Washington Square Park

More about Washington Square Park at the Washington Square Park blog and the Arch at the NYC Parks website.

Southwest flora in Albuquerque

While attending a conference in Albuquerque last year, I visited the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science and photographed some of the native plants on its grounds, some of which are labeled. I wish more public agencies labeled the flora on their properties. The city as arboretum!

(Boston) Tea Party

Float, July 4th 2008, Beverly Farms, Massachusetts